Cure the Innocent
by InlovewithBroadway
Summary: A massive re-write of my first fanfiction story entitled "The Cure". Set in early 1885, three or so years after the musical, the story follows a broken Christine as she flees France and strives to obtain a new life, free of her past. E/C.


**CURE THE INNOCENT**

**BY: A.M. MCCASKILL**

**CHAPTER ONE**

**Numb**

_Le Harve, France -- __January 1885_

As if my entire body was hit by lighting, I awake with a jolt. I breathe heavily, upset and disturbed, even though the room around me is still. My usually frizzy locks are plastered to my head. My hands are shaking, and my whole body quivers. For a moment, I panic. I do not recognize anything. The room is still dark and nothing is where it should be. Everything is out of place. Including me.

Minutes pass as I simply hold onto myself, rocking back and forth slowly on the tiny cot, while I try to rid the gruesome dream from my mind. The days have started this way for weeks now. Every morning, I am violently pried away from a horrific sleep. Every morning, I arouse to feel as if I have been relinquished from strangulation by a near miss. Every morning, I lie drenched in sweat, heaving for air. My waking ritual.

Finally, as the memories from a late last night come back to me and the veil of sleeping nightmares is slowly lifted, and I realize I am still in Le Harve. At the inn. Not the home I am so used to, but not completely unfamiliar. Trying to shake off the last of my dream, I shed the blankets plastered to my skin. I try to stand, and it's a wobbly procession, but finally I am able to find my bearings. I stalk over to the washroom in the corner, a mere four feet from the small cot I had dreamt upon mere minutes ago.

I rinse my hands in the water basin slowly before running them through my matted hair. The water is cool and fresh on my burning skin, and I stand there for a moment, simply breathing. Although it does little to calm my nerves, this is also a morning ritual I have acquired, and the routine more than anything gets me through each morning. As I finally stand up straight, intent on getting ready for the day despite the early hour, I make an unusual mistake. On mere accident and accident alone, I find myself catching a glimpse of my reflection in the full length mirror by the basin. I want to instantly look away, and yet I watch helplessly as my double cringes at the disturbing image.

A poorly-drawn caricature of an ancient past-self stares back. It has been weeks since I've looked in a mirror properly and I can understand why. My face is gaunt. My once fair skin looks like wax, as if I was carved from a yellow, crooked candle. The black bags do little to hide my bloodshot eyes, proving that little sleep and even less food ages the body much faster than time is usually able to accomplish.

As I stand in awe of the change so quickly to claim myself, the more I stare the more I am unable to look away. It seems I am oddly infatuated with this metamorphoses. I'm so thin, I frighten myself. Underfed, bony protuberances poke out at a hundred points from under my skin, and I instantly feel less like a woman and more like a badly misshapen log. As I move an arm up to brush a strand of brown, tangled hair out of my face, I look like a skeleton brought to life. A sideshow attraction.

Less than human.

Slowly, I watch as a frown spreads to my face as my features give away my self-deprecation. I tear myself away from the mirror then, scolding myself as I do so. I am a fool. To compare oneself to a past vision is to slowly kill one's dignity. Aesthetics are worthless in my new, brutal world. As I hold my arms to my body, and easily feel my ribs underneath, I realize that the brief study in the mirror was a mistake.

In the past, I knew so little about what is actually important. The mastered skill of polite conversation, the incessant need to always look beautiful, the acclaimed nature of a perfect voice, all those frivolities I treasured and sought after with what I thought was all of my soul.

Little did I know that I had really never needed anything with the true depth of my being until I was denied the essential components of life. Conversation is impossible without air. Beauty withers away without food. A soprano's voice will melt to nothing without water. All of it's mere vagary in comparison to what matters. You will never really want anything; you will never really crave anything until food, air, water become scarce. And of course the money it takes obtain these things. That's what really, truly matters.

Walking to the other side of the room slowly, my eyes glance at the bedside table. Juxtaposed perfectly against the old, rotting wood lies the last of my valuable possessions. It's a polished, ruby cut necklace, and it's the only thing I have left to sell.

How ignorant I was to not realize that beauty and accomplishment buy little in this world. That the only thing of value stares back at me right now, the red jewels now winking in the early sunlight peering through the soot-stained window. This necklace used to represent treasured memories. Now, it's a strand of rocks put together in a clever way that will hopefully look appeasing enough to a vendor on the street to buy off me today.

I am out of money. I am out of time. This necklace is my only hope of freedom. So I will fight and barter and use and sell with everything I have until I get enough for it to escape.

And then, finally, I will be able leave. I will leave France and with it my smoking, desecrated past. And perhaps, just maybe, this nightmare will end.

**--**

_**AN: Dear readers- I have been away from the Phantom of the Opera fanfiction world for quite some time. Although a huge fan of both the Leruoux and Kay novels, and of both stage musical and movie, I have not been a very good "phan" as of late. **_

_**Almost five years ago to the day, I started a novel entitled "The Cure". It was the first serious piece of fiction I had ever written, and after 23 chapters, 150,000 words and (sadly) an unfinished ending, I still walked away from my story inspired. Over the course of the next four years, I began to write more and more, fanfiction and original, and now it is a hobby I cannot live without. In fact, I have just recently applied to several grad schools to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing, a step in my journey I cannot wait to take.**_

_**The reason I go into such detail is to explain how important "The Cure" was in discovering my love for writing. And now, as I transition to a different stage of my writing career, I wish to come back to "The Cure" to finish it. Less than a year ago, I took the story off , my intentions being a massive re-write of the more amateur parts that made me cringe and finally finish the story I started so long ago. Finally, I have the time to do this, and I start today. And so, if you've been on for quite some time and used to read Phantom of the Opera fiction, you might recognize bits and pieces of the first 23 chapters of this story. If you have not, I invite you to read, and enjoy a little bit of a very important piece of writing in my life. **_

_**I warn readers that, even with my polishing, it still is rough. I have tried to delve deeper into the character's minds to make it more realistic, and have researched further the time period and setting in which the story takes place. I hope these changes make a small difference in the story's quality, although I hope it does not lessen the integrity of the original piece.**_

_**If you have read any story by me in the past, I thank you. Thank you for reading this unbearably long author's note. :) **__**Enjoy and, as always, happy reading and happy writing.**_

**_Sincerely, Amber_**


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